Why am I always posting about Pokemon on here?(:

One of the nicest things about living in Michigan is the amount of people that we know here. And vice versa, the amount of people who know us (: I still get visiting people from the stake coming up to me at church and asking if I'm related to the Kennedy Clan from Ypsi, and they're always excited to tell me they were in Young Men's with Daddy or something.

Visiting Beth, Chris, and nephews/nieces Riley, Reid, Maggie and Logan has always been something fun to do on Sundays. Recently it hasn't happened that often due to a really busy schedule and some random Sunday meetings for Sunday School Presidency and whatever. Riley a couple weeks back, when we went to their ward, specifically asked me to come over sometime. I couldn't say no just cause it was him, BUT the clincher? He asked me to bring my Pokemon cards (:

It's funny because for a while when we came back to the U.S., I thought Pokemon had sung its last song. I still had all the cards I collected over the years in Germany and on a few fateful trips back to the U.S. (when my Pokemon card luck was unparalleled) but I didn't know anybody who played it, or cared about it or still had their cards and whatever. So they kind of just sat at home in a drawer, and I'd pull them out every once in a while to look at the artwork and stuff.

Blame it on the fact though that I hung out with band kids for most of my high school career, but you better believe I heard about Pokemon when it started coming back. Not quite sure when that was, but all of sudden Pokemon Nintendo DS games were huge, and people were trading the cards on band trips and playing the game and all this stuff. Funny thing was, these cards were WAY flashier than I had ever had. The style of the cards changed to be less drawn/animated, and more into 3D design style where everything seemed a little grander than before. It was kinda intimidating.


Ethan and I on a recent trip to CVS decided to buy a random pack of 8 Pokemon cards with a little bit of extra cash... (Mama sent us in with a 20 for a gallon of milk, some chocolate and a bag of Doritos, and we just had to spend the rest of it on Pokemon). Opening it felt the same as before: you don't know what cards are in each pack, so there's a lot of excitement going from one card to the next! But after the initial apprehension, it didn't feel the same. Pokemon have gone from an original 150 different kinds, to I don't even know how many now. And now when I open up a pack, I don't even know half of the Pokemon in there. It's definitely changed from something simple and fun to something a little more complex.

Going over to Beth's house to show Riley and Reid my collection, I wasn't really sure if they would even know some of my best cards. Since all the cards I have are so old, and now the number of new Pokemon are dramatically more than the original 150-200, I figured there wasn't much chance of them recognizing any of my Pokemon.

Turns out to an 11 and a 7 year old, I've got a pretty great collection(: Cards that were particularly adored included a Typhlosion,  Shining Gyrados, Tyranitar, a Misty's Tentacruel, an Impergator, a Nidoking/Nidoqueen duo, and a first edition Machamp. And of course they're all holographic (: hehehe

Something about it though made me remember just how great Pokemon was, and to get a little deeper, how great my childhood was(: Like to remember freaking out when someone showed me their best card, and then trying to trade everything I had for it, or drawing Pokemon on spare pieces of paper cause I liked the artwork, or throwing cards everywhere after I aggressively opened a pack, and seeing a holographic Blaine's Charizard laying on the floor of the Meijer checkout line(:(:  It brought back all these good memories of my childhood that, even though they seem a little silly now, are stories I still tell. And to see that same excitement happen in little kids now seemed like a pretty cool experience(:

So while everyone's throwing theirs away, I'm keeping my little collection. Otherwise those would be a lot of lost memories (: